New Race Sign-Up Service Offers Changes After Industry Criticism

The founders of a race subscription service that launched on May 9 have met with resistance from race directors and running industry groups.

Racepass, founded by three Google engineers and headquartered in Mountain View, California, aims to simplify race registration and give runners a one-stop shop for a broad array of races. The website lists 5,000 events and offers three levels of subscriptions—runners can buy three races for $195, five races for $295, and unlimited races for $695 per year, an offering that is currently sold out.

But as soon as the service launched, race directors started raising questions.

Chief among them: The service was filling out waivers on behalf of the runners who registered—which isn’t allowed if the race’s insurance is to be valid. And races weren’t asked if they wanted to be on the site.

Jean Knaack, executive director of the Road Runners Club of America, said many of its 2,500 member organizations turn to RRCA to buy insurance for races.

An email went out to members entitled “RRCA Position Statement on RacePass” and warned: “This service presents a violation of the RRCA’s insurance program requirement to obtain waivers directly from all event participants.”

“We will be rolling out this capability later this week, we’ve suspended all race registrations until then,” cofounder Chase Rigby, 28, wrote in the post. “Our product team is committed to getting this right and will be working to integrate directly with races and race platforms to obtain and secure individuals waivers for any and all registrations.”

Rigby says there was no way to contact all 5,000 races before launch, nor does listing a race imply a relationship. “By listing the race, we are not saying we are in partnership,” he said in a phone call with Runner’s World on May 22. “We are saying that there is a race taking place [in this location], and we hope that this is a good thing for races, to be able to be discovered.”

He said if Racepass hears from a race director that he or she doesn’t want the race listed, “we are happy removing it.”

That bumpy start was to be expected, Rigby says. The site as it exists now is Racepass’s “MVP,” a minimum viable product. “It’s barebones, it’s functional, it’s not pretty, it’s not all the bells and whistles,” he said. “We mostly wanted to see: How will people respond to this? Is there something that people will be interested in, is there even a demand there?” The company welcomes the feedback and criticism, he says.

Though he declined to disclose user numbers, Rigby said the response from runners “has been awesome.” Before race registrations were suspended while the company works out the waiver requirement, “we had about 100 people sign up a day,” he said.

Jeff Matlow, the CEO of online race registration company imATHLETE, describes the Racepass founders as very smart runners who do not know about the running industry.

Matlow did have discussions with Racepass before the site launched. In an email to Runner’s World, a Racepass representative listed 22 organizations in the racing industry that Racepass reached out to before it began taking subscriptions on May 9. Some responded; many others didn’t. Some have responded now that Racepass is live.

“In my opinion,” Matlow said, “I give them credit for trying to solve what they perceive as a problem in the business. Their strategy is as normal a strategy as you see in Silicon Valley—roll out, get feedback, continue to iterate.”

But Matlow says simplifying race registration is not so easy. In the Racepass model, if an event has to cancel, he asks, who gets the money back? Races ask many questions of runners during registration. Some of these questions are an attempt to collect data for the benefit of race sponsors; others are purely practical. For instance: Do you want to ride the bus to the start?

“They are smart guys,” he said. “They will figure something out.”

Sarah Lorge ButlerSarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005.

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